The generation of administrative reports relating to the activities, tasks, assignments, priorities and performance of full time employees (FTE) in an organization is a common and frequent manual process. The reports are typically prepared by employees in one organizational level for review, comment and approval by individuals in a higher or more senior level in the organization. The reports typically include workload and performance related reports, among other reports. Workload reports include information relating to an employee's current and projected assignments or tasks and priorities. Performance reports include information relating to the status, priority and progress of tasks that have been assigned to an employee or that the individual is responsible for. Further, performance reports can include information that tracks an individual's progress toward organizational goals and the employee's personal and professional development goals.
Typically, administrative reports are generated on a regular and periodic basis to meet the needs and requirements of individuals or departments within an organization. For example, the reports could be generated weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, at midyear and/or at year's end. Administrative reports enable organizations to carry out workload management and performance management of their employee workforce. The reports can serve as a tool for supervisors and senior management to know the workload of employees, how employee resources are being allocated, whether the allocation of personnel resources is optimum, how to improve employee productivity, whether employees are making progress toward organizational goals, the productivity of employees and department, etc. For employees, the reports can serve as a tool to stay on schedule in their assigned tasks and responsibilities, and as a means to track and measure progress toward their personal development goals.
Existing processes for preparing workload or task reports are very time consuming for the employees that are required to prepare descriptions of their assigned tasks and status or updates for those tasks. The preparation of workload reports typically involves various levels of employees or personnel in an organization or company depending on the number and level of managers, leaders or supervisors that will receive the workload reports.
Typically, employees on a first or initial level will prepare descriptions or summaries of the tasks they are responsible for. The first level employees commonly provide a status or update on their assigned tasks as required by a particular report. Further, depending on the type of workload or task report ultimately being prepared, the first level employee will often provide varying levels of detail or complexity in their description and summaries. For example, the desired report may be a bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly report. These periodic reports tend to have the same general content but different levels of detail. Thus, the employee will have to repeat the preparation of task descriptions or summaries with the same general content but different levels of detail to match the desired report. Furthermore, the employee may have to send the prepared task descriptions to different individuals in an organization or to different locations or departments in the organization.
Once the employee has completed the preparation of the tasks descriptions, the employee can send them to a designated individual or group of individuals. However, before sending the prepared descriptions, the employee may send them to an assigned administrative assistant. The administrative assistant will generally be familiar with the employees tasks and will review, verify and compile the employee's task descriptions. The administrative assistant will typically be assigned to various employees and thus will review and compile all the tasks descriptions submitted to her by various employees.
Once the employee task descriptions are compiled and ready for submission, either the individual employee or the responsible administrative assistant will forward all the prepared task descriptions to a next designated level for inclusion into the desired report. For example, if the desired report is for an accounting department, the employees may be first level accountants and they may be submitting their tasks descriptions to their manager, supervisor or department head, who are typically at a second or higher level in the organization relative to the employee preparing the task descriptions. Further, the prepared tasks descriptions are usually submitted to a second administrative assistant supporting the second level manager, supervisor or department head. The second administrator will also received other prepared descriptions from other first level administrative in the same department. This can be the case because an administrative assistant may only be assigned to a few employees, e.g., four employees, while there may be a large number of employees in the department, e.g., twenty employees. Thus, there would be more than one administrative assistant in the first level for that department.
The second administrative assistant will then compile all the received task descriptions into the desired report, e.g., a monthly report of employee workload and task status. If the second level is the final destination of the report, then the prepared report is a master report. The report is then submitted to the second level manage, supervisor or department head. The second level individual can then use the prepared master report for workload management. The second level individual will be able to see where his employees resources are allocated and be able to track their task progress in light of department or organizational goals or benchmarks. The second level individual could then maintain the status quo if all is well or reassign, re-prioritize, and reallocate employee resources as deemed necessary to meet department or organizational goals.
If the desired report is intended to be for a next or higher level, e.g., at a higher senior level above the department level, the compiled report prepared by the second administrative assistant will be sent to a next or third level. Once the compiled report for one department is complete and ready for submission, the responsible second level individual or the assigned second level administrative assistant will forward the prepared department report having the compiled task descriptions to the next designated third level for inclusion into the desired third level report. For example, if the desired report is for an overall organization, the second level individual may be a department head or supervisor that is submitting the department compiled report having tasks descriptions to a senior leader or organization head, who is at a third or higher level in the organization relative to the department head submitting the department report. Again, the compiled individual department reports are typically submitted to a third administrative assistant supporting the senior leader or organization head. The third administrator will again received other prepared department reports from other second level administrative assistants from the various organization departments, e.g., engineering, marketing, research, finance, payroll, etc. This is the case, as each department head in the second level, usually via an administrative assistant, will submit their compiled department report.
The third administrative assistant will then compile all the received department reports into the desired report, e.g., a monthly report of department tasks and status along with employee workload and task status. If the third level is the final destination of the report, then the compiled report is a master report. The report is then submitted to the third level senior leader or organization head. The third level individual can then use the prepared master report for workload management. The third level individual will be able to determine the progress of each department in the organization and where employees resources are allocated. The third level individual will be able to track department progress toward organizational goals or benchmarks. The third level individual can then maintain the status quo if all is well or reassign, re-prioritize, or reallocate department and employee resources as deemed necessary to meet organizational goals. Those of skill in the art, will readily recognize that this manual process is typically repeatable for a large organization or group that has a large number of employees, departments, groups, businesses units, or organizational layers.
A similar manual process is carried out for the creation of performance reports for employees in department or organization for use in performance management reports. In these types of reports, the employees and supervisors might enter descriptions of development goals for themselves and for their work group, individual employees might further enter goals aimed at meeting goals set by supervisors or their own development goals. Further, employees and supervisors may enter comments relating to performance evaluations. The performance reports can be used to track employee development goals and work performance for employee performance review.
Performance reports are typically generated at mid-year and year-end when employee goal assessments are prepared and performance reviews are conducted. The employees, managers and supervisors can then use the prepared performance reports for performance management. Individual employees and supervisory personnel are able to determine whether the employee's tasks and responsibilities are pertinent to developing the employee's skill and abilities. Also, employees and supervisory personnel are able to track employee progress toward their individual and company goals, as well as determine whether the employees are performing their jobs at an acceptable level. In this manner, employees and supervisory personnel can determine, among other things, if an employee needs to be reassigned to another more challenging position or whether performance raises should be given.
The manual processes described are representative of existing methods used to generate reports in organizations to assist in workload and performance management. The reports can be generated on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or semi-yearly, yearly basis, or any other desired time period. Further, the processes just described are manual process that are time intensive and typically take full time employees (FTE) away from performing their primary organizational duties and responsibilities in order to prepare the description for administrative reports. For example, an engineer, account and payroll employee must take time out of performing their engineering, accounting or payroll duties to prepare task and performance related descriptions and status for workload and performance reports. In addition, administrative assistant are typically brought into the manual report preparation process and must spend a large amounts of time manually compiling receive task and performance related descriptions into complied workload or performance reports.
Another drawback to existing the manual report generation processes is that, depending on the type of report to be generated, the various employees creating the task and performance related descriptions must typically create the task and performance related descriptions at different points in time and usually stored them at different locations, e.g. each employee might store their workload or performance descriptions on their own separate computers or on the computers of their administrative assistants. Thus, the various employee workload and performance descriptions are typically scattered throughout a department or organization which makes the report generation process more time consuming since takes time to create and bring the appropriate employee descriptions together for the compilation of a desired report. Thus, existing manual report generation processes, like those described, can be very time and manpower intensive, and can substantially interfere with an employee's primary duties and responsibilities, as well as their ability to provide a high level of value added work to the organization.
There is thus a need for an improved and efficient method for generating administrative reports in an automated manner for use in workload and performance management. There is also a need for an automated method for generating administrative reports that enables users contributing to the reports to create and store task, goal and progress related descriptions in a central location from which appropriate task, goal and progress descriptions can be selectively retrieved for use in a desired periodic report for use in workload and performance management.